“Hypermicro” Public Relations

More and more agencies have figured out that they need to incorporate “Blogger Relations” into their bag of tricks. (Whether they are doing a good job is debatable, ok, I know.)

But if you’ve learned nothing else from this blog, you know it’s not just about the bloggers. The seismic shift is about the people. The just folks. The average joes & janes. They’re not all blogging. In fact, most of ‘em are not blogging.

Menawhile, Twitter and Facebook are growing like crazy. There’s a good reason for it: the barriers to content creation are incredibly low. The ease with which you can find and interact with like-minded contacts, including friends, is nearly miraculous. As net pundit Clay Shirky pointed out in a recent speech: now, “the technology for publishing is the same technology used for consumption.” And that makes all the difference.

That’s why more and more of our PR programs target not just mainstream media and bloggers but also “regular folks.” The latter can be found in Facebook Groups, on Twitter, in message boards, etc.

In fact, we are developing a strategy this month for a major brand, and there is no call from the client to contact mainstream media … bloggers are important to the mix, but are just one aspect … the bulk of the work will be done along the furthest edges. That’s what the CLIENT wants.

Think back 18 months ago, my fellow PR professional. Were we writing PR proposals that targeted Joe Mouseclick? Would our Big Name Client have been satisfied with a PR plan that had ZERO Media Relations aspects? No, we were “influencing the influencers” who influenced the masses.

But paraphrasing Shirky again, this is no longer about “professionals broadcasting media to amateurs.” The amateurs are as important as the tastemakers. We’re going “hypermicro.”

Scalability challenges? Huge. Exciting? Dangerous? Hard to measure? Definitely. Would I go back to Ye Olde & Simple Days of PR? NFW.

Continue reading here: How Many Twitter Handles?

Was this article helpful?